


progress

by gearyoak



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, i don't even know if i spelled that right, this is nonsensical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:48:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24953296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gearyoak/pseuds/gearyoak
Summary: aftermath of the security breech
Relationships: Crypto | Park Tae Joon/Mirage | Elliott Witt
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45
Collections: AL_Cryptage





	progress

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally posted on tumblr like last night?? or this morning i already can;t remember. i didn't edit it the first time and posting it here i gave it like a quick skim and fixed up a few things, but it's still not great. 
> 
> and no, i will absolutely not be calling crypto's drone "hack" because that's like the dumbest shit i've ever heard of 
> 
> sorry if they seem ooc, i haven't written them for a while.

Elliott was no stranger to odd hours.

Honestly, he and odd hours were well acquainted. Good friends, even. That didn’t mean, however, he appreciated seeing odd hours when he’d been sure he was out for the night - tucked into bed with clean sheets after an enriching and hydrating face wash. Nobody liked losing sleep, not even for good friends.

And yet, here he was. Losing sleep.

He fell back from his side and sighed blearily up at the ceiling, the puff of air lifting some of the curls that had lost its product and slumped into his face. Lazily, his arm slid from where it’d been draped across his chest and dropped into the space next to him. Finding the spot vacant - not only unslept in, but cold - was sobering. Not surprising, but sobering. 

Sighing again, Elliott silently chastised himself, because he should have seen this coming.

Quietly, he pulled himself from his bed, scrounged around his floor for a pair of socks, then trudged out into the dorms’ halls. The first thing he checked was Taejoon’s room. It wasn’t often that he stayed in it anymore - for sleeping, that is. All of his personal belongings were still stored on the shelves and shoved in boxes underneath the cot, although more and more of his clothes found his way into Elliott’s laundry recently. 

The fucking _sneak_. 

Tonight, it was empty of Taejoon and, most notably, the drone and its docking station. For a third time, Elliott sighed. He _really_ ought to have seen this coming. 

In the lower levels of the dropship, only one light in the workshops was turned on. It was odd, seeing as the space was usually the busiest on the ship when the legends weren’t in game or making a disaster in the cafeteria. Without Lifeline digging dirt out of D.O.C. or Octane hammering away wildly at his legs or Bangalore disassembling and reassembling her absolutely-not-permitted-to-be-on-the-ship-but-what-was-Elliott-going-to-do-about-it-call-her-out-yeah-right wingman, it seemed like all the energy had been sucked away.

Maybe not sucked away. There was still something there, something that made the line of Elliott’s shoulders feel brittle, high-strung. It was tension, it was uneasiness. It was sour and it was concentrated underneath the lonely light, where Taejoon hunched over a workbench, forehead pressed hard into the heels of his palms. 

At some point, he’d shed his jacket and left it slack over the edge of an adjacent workbench. The thin black shirt he’d been wearing underneath was wrinkled and only helped in making Taejoon look more rung out, sleeves pushed up over and over again. In front of him on the table was his drone in pieces, scattered about the table’s surface. A computer screen docked to the side displayed logs; if Elliott were to guess, they probably read off information on system scans. 

Fourth time’s a charm, he sighed again. He was able to get out the entirety of the word “hey” before Taejoon’s voice snapped up from his rigid form. “Go back to bed,” he ordered, monotone but still firm. Hard. 

Elliott felt his mouth pull down in a frown, one he twisted into a pout even though Taejoon still hadn’t looked up at him. “Only my mom gets to tell me what to do, and last I checked, you’re not - Well. I’m not gonna finish that one, that’s a weird thought.” 

Taejoon, stock-still, didn’t respond. 

Elliott’s pout returned to a frown. “Baby.” Nohthing. Elliott ventured closer, and the very second he laid a palm out on Taejoon’s neck, gently thumbing at a strained tendon, Taejoon’s shoulders slumped.

His hands fell forward and folded together, knuckles white. His eyes were dull and somehow still stony, smudged blue and puffy underneath. “I don’t know how he did it.” 

For a moment, Elliott wished he could pretend he didn’t know what he was talking about. “I think that’s the point. He’s got the whole crazy, all-powerful thing going on.” Taejoon’s continued silence told Elliott this was not the answer he wanted to hear. Unfortunately, he didn’t have one good enough that he felt he could give, none besides, “This isn’t going to help.”

_“Nothing_ is going to help until I fix it,” Taejoon hissed out, jaw set and gaze forward, unseeing of the mess in front of him.

In pieces, the drone seemed so unimpressive. Nothing to lose sleep over. Elliott found it was hard to imagine it as it had been before, green light an oozing kind of red, a voice like radio static spilling from its innards. The sight of it was jarring, but the meaning behind it, the intentional stab - Revenant outplaying the man so hellbent on secrecy and security - it was another threat. Those, the shade seemed to have an abundance of. 

“How're you planning on fixing anything if you’re so exhausted you can’t even see straight?” Elliott finally brought himself to ask. Taejoon made a point to shift his gaze over to the other in order to level him with the most unflagging and unwavering stare. Elliott chose to see this as progress. “C’mon, just come to bed. I can’t sleep without you kneeing me in the back anymore.” 

The way Taejoon didn’t immediately bite back with a remark that involved telling him he should get used to insomnia was very telling of how far they’d come. Again - _progress._

“Just leave it like this,” Elliott suggested with a shrug and through a yawn. “He can’t fly around and terrorize the public with just wires.”

“My drone is a computer,” Taejoon stated, words slow and purposeful. They came out faster after, the more he spoke. “He was _inside_ my computer, this isn’t just taking control of my surveillance, this is - _shibal!”_

He stood suddenly, the sound of the chair being shoved back loud and deafening. Elliott flinched back from it before he could stop himself. Taejoon made an aborted gesture toward his jacket, like maybe he was going to grab it and leave, but he withdrew before he even touched it. Instead he faces away from the jacket, his gutted drone, from Elliott. 

It was quiet. Elliott heard his breathing, Taejoon’s, the hum of the single overhead lamp. One long, monotonous noise; it sounded like radio static. The hairs on his arms stood up so he crossed them in order to run his palms over the skin, smoothing over it and the goosebumps that accompanied them. 

“I’m scared of him, too,” Elliott admitted, if only to hear anything else.

“I’m not afraid of him,” Taejoon replied quickly, through gritted teeth. “I’ll kill him,” he added on with such an intense certainty it seemed one step away from being reality, like he could make it so just by saying it out loud. “I’ve come too far for it all to be taken away again.”

Elliott thought to himself, _ah_. He thought to himself, _I should have thought of that, too_. 

The last time somebody out-hacked Taejoon Park, he lost his sister, his identity, and his freedom. Now it’s happened again. Truly and honestly, it was a wonder that the man was even still here and not on the run three planets away. 

Elliott thought to himself, _Progress._

“Come to bed,” He pleaded again, softer. When he moved forward, socks soundless on the metal-sheeted floor, and touched Taejoon’s waist, the other leaned into it minutely. Elliott put on a smile - for Taejoon, for himself. “Murder Bot’ll still be there in the morning, ripe for the killing.” 

The fight seemed to have left the other in one fell swoop. “You just said you were afraid of him.”

Elliott grinned like a man who’d won something. “I’m _afraid_ of the effects of not getting a full eight hours of sleep. A good night’s rest is croose - cru - it’s important for good skin. See? I’m too tired. I can’t even say crucial - oh, I did just then!”

At some point, Elliott’s hand moved from Taejoon’s waist to his elbow, then to his own hand where Elliott pushed his fingers between the other’s. At some point, Taejoon let himself be pulled from the workshop, toward the lift that brought them to the dorms.

At some point, they thought to return for the abandoned jacket. 

**Author's Note:**

> i got a pocket got a pocket full of sunshine oh ohwhoaoh


End file.
